memory_alphafandomcom-20200223-history
Rick Sternbach
| Place of birth = Bridgeport, Connecticut, USA | Date of death = | Place of death = | Awards for Trek = | Roles = (Senior) Illustrator, Technical Consultant and Scenic Artist, ''Star Trek'' author | image2 = Michael Okuda and Rick Sternbach.jpg | imagecap2 = Sternbach and Michael Okuda }} Richard "Rick" Michael Sternbach was the (senior) production illustrator/designer for , Star Trek: The Next Generation, the first two seasons of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, and Star Trek: Voyager. He was also the scenic artist for , providing designs for everything from the Argo shuttle to a Romulan sculpture. Rick Sternbach was offered his, otherwise uncredited, illustrator position in the art department on Star Trek: The Motion Picture in April 1978. Working alongside Mike Minor, he designed control panel layouts and signage for the starship sets, and for which he co-authored the updated internal instruction manual, "Enterprise" Flight Manual. Besides this, he also helped to create the animated asteroid wormhole sequence and helped to obtain source material from NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), that was used in the design of V'Ger. http://www.trekplace.com/ricksternbach.html Recalling how he was hired for the television franchise, Rick Sternbach has reminisced, "The story I usually tell is that late in 1986, when Paramount announced TNG, I heard it over the radio while driving on the freeway, pulled off to a pay phone, and talked to Susan Sackett, Gene's assistant, all within about 25 seconds. I had a few meetings with Bob Justman, Gene, Dorothy Fontana, and David Gerrold, left my portfolio, and was officially hired on in January of 1987. Andy Probert and I were the first two artists brought in, even before an art director, and for the first few months we worked up a foamcore model of the bridge and hundreds of sketches of all the things a good Star Trek production should have. We initially worked up generic items, but eventually we got into story-specific sets and props for ." http://www.trekplace.com/ricksternbach.html For the television shows, Rick Sternbach, after he succeeded Probert as senior illustrator when the latter left the franchise upon the conclusion of The Next Generation first season, has designed a multitude of starships and space stations. He also was responsible for the design of hundreds of props and set pieces, including the mural painting of the Enterprise-D in Picard's ready room, which was painted by Probert. He also developed weaponry, PADDs, tricorders and communicators for Starfleet, Klingon, Romulan, Cardassian, Bajoran, Kazon, Ferengi, and other races. As a big fan of Japanese animation, anime references are often secretly placed in his designs, notably "the Egg", a design borrowed from the Dirty Pair. Together with Michael Okuda, he served as a technical consultant to the script staff, maintaining technical and chronological continuity and inventing scientific terms and technobabble, resulting in internal documents as Star Trek: The Next Generation Writers' Technical Manual and Star Trek: Voyager Technical Manual. In 1980 he created several illustrations for the Star Trek Spaceflight Chronology by Stanley and Fred Goldstein. He has also co-written the Star Trek: The Next Generation Technical Manual, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Technical Manual, Star Trek: The Next Generation USS Enterprise NCC-1701-D Blueprints as well as the "Starfleet Technical Database" articles for . Sternbach started out making his designs the traditional way, that is in paper and pencil, but acquired skills in computer generated imagery (CGI) modeling as well (skills he picked up while working in 1983 on the science fiction movie The Last Starfighter), turning in design concepts at a later stage both in paper and pencil and rudimentary CGI models. ( , pp. 94-97) He has been critical of the Production Design of the 2009 film , specifically that of the design of the . He criticized the apparent lack of line of sight for the nacelles to open space, proportions of various sections, and an overall lack of knowledge of how Star Trek technology works. "Perhaps the designers didn't know exactly how the different hardware bits worked". While no longer working on Star Trek, Sternbach continues to create futuristic designs for sci-fi productions. He also actively maintained contact with the Star Trek fan-base through Internet blogs like "Trekbbs" and more recently the " " by answering questions and explaining his thought processes on his work for Star Trek. Sternbach is also operating a webshop, "intrep74656", through eBay, selling commercialized editions of his work. Career outside Star Trek An Connecticut native, Rick Sternbach enrolled in that state's university in 1972 with an art major, but switching after a couple of years to marine biology. http://www.trekplace.com/ricksternbach.html Nevertheless, he became a book and magazine illustrator upon graduation, among others for the Galaxy Science Fiction and Analog magazines, having for example provided the cover and interior art for Starlog Press' Future Life issue 17 of 1980. During this time he helped found the Association of Science Fiction and Fantasy Artists (ASFA), an organization which aim it was to tender legal advice to science fiction and fantasy artists on contracts and copyrights. Inspired by artist Ralph McQuarrie's example, who left the aerospace industry to work for George Lucas on Star Wars, Sternbach made the decision as well to move to California in order to seek illustration work in the motion picture industry. After some work for Disney and PBS, the latter of which he did preliminary work for on Carl Sagan's television series Cosmos, he was offered the position in the art department for The Motion Picture. Around the same time he had worked for JPL, where he collaborated with Charley Kohlhase and Jim Blinn on the real world Voyager 1 Jupiter flyby movie, creating textures for the Galilean satellites. That flyby movie became the primary inspiration source for Alvy Ray Smith (at the time a co-worker of Sternbach at JPL) and Loren Carpenter at the Graphics Group, when they designed the very first fully textured CGI effect seen by the general public, the "Genesis Demo", for . After his tenure on The Motion Picture he returned to PBS to resume work on Cosmos, which he continued to do for the entire run of the series. Despite Sternbach's noticeable visual contributions to the Star Trek universe, his work has never been acknowledged with an Emmy Award nomination, yet he did receive, and won, one in 1981 for his work on the Cosmos episode, "The Shores of the Cosmic Ocean". Other motion picture projects he has worked on, predominantly as illustrator/graphic artist were, Rich and Famous (1981, uncredited), the documentary Future Flight (1987), The Last Starfighter (1983, for which he also story-boarded visual effects sequences and developed texture maps for CGI space scenes), and the remake of the science movie Solaris (2002) Outside his Emmy Award, Rick Sternbach's illustration work in the 1970s has garnered him two consecutive Hugo Awards for " " in 1977 and 1978. Considered by the usenet newsgroup sci.space.history as a leading expert on the various paint schemes used on the Saturn V booster, Sternbach has until recently, through his official website, "Space Model Systems", sold accurate decals for model kits of the Saturn V, as well as the Apollo Command Module. Starship and Space Station designs for Star Trek Rick Sternbach's designs for several new studio models, including: * Starships ** Academy flight trainer ** Ares IV ** Cardassian ATR-4107 ** Class 2 shuttle ** ** ** Delta Flyer ** the Egg ** Friendship 1 ** ** ** ''Intrepid''-type escape pod ** Millennium Gate ** ''Negh'var'' warship ** ** ** Romulan scout ship ** Talarian observation craft ** Talarian warship ** ** Yridian starship * Space stations ** Deep Space 9 (with Herman Zimmerman) ** Jupiter Station ** ** MIDAS array Star Trek credits * Star Trek films ** - Illustrator (uncredited) ** - Illustrator ** - Scenic Artist * ** Season 1 - Illustrator ** Season 2 - Senior Illustrator ** Season 3 - Senior Illustrator/Technical Consultant (credited only Senior Illustrator until ) ** Season 4 - Senior Illustrator/Technical Consultant ** Season 5 - Senior Illustrator/Technical Consultant ** Season 6 - Senior Illustrator/Technical Consultant ** Season 7 - Senior Illustrator/Technical Consultant * ** Season 1 - Senior Illustrator/Technical Consultant ** Season 2 - Senior Illustrator/Technical Consultant * ** Season 1 - Senior Illustrator/Technical Consultant ** Season 2 - Senior Illustrator/Technical Consultant ** Season 3 - Senior Illustrator/Technical Consultant ** Season 4 - Senior Illustrator/Technical Consultant ** Season 5 - Senior Illustrator/Technical Consultant ** Season 6 - Senior Illustrator/Technical Consultant ** Season 7 - Senior Illustrator/Technical Consultant Bibliography * Star Trek Spaceflight Chronology, 1979 – Illustrator * "Enterprise" Flight Manual, 2nd edition, 1979 – Co-illustrator * Star Trek: The Next Generation Writers' Technical Manual, 1989 – Co-illustrator/Co-author * Star Trek: The Next Generation Technical Manual, 1991 – Co-illustrator/Co-author * Star Trek: The Next Generation USS Enterprise NCC-1701-D Blueprints, 1996 – Illustrator/Author * Star Trek: Voyager Technical Manual, 1994 – Co-illustrator/Co-author * Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Technical Manual, 1998 – Co-author * "Anatomy of a Shuttle", Sci-Fi & Fantasy Models International, issue 36, 1999, pp. 29-34 – Illustrator/Author * "Designing Tricorders", , May 1999, pp. 22-25 – Illustrator/Author * "A Close Look at the [[USS Voyager|USS Voyager NCC-74656]]", , August 2000, pp. 69-73 – Author * "Designing the Delta Flyer", , October 2000, pp. 50-55 – Illustrator/Author * "Designing the ", , November 2000, pp. 20-25 – Illustrator/Author * "Designing the USS Voyager, Part 2", , December 2000, pp. 48-53 – Illustrator/Author * "Designing the Runabout", , February 2002, pp. 54-59 – Illustrator/Author * Starfleet Technical Database – Author: ** " - Design Evolution 2361-2370" - Stardate 38552.76-47132.86 in , May 2002 ** "Klingon Technology - Personal Weapons" - Stardate 56637.32 in , November 2002 ** " - Engineering Report 3.01" - Stardate 56281.43 in , January 2003 ** "Romulan Propulsion - Historical Overview" - Stardate 56178.92 in , February 2003 ** "Aeroshuttle Technology - Engineering Report 4.1" - Stardate 56328.74 in , April 2003 * "Designing the ", , March 2003, pp. 92-96 – Illustrator/Author * "Designing Hirogen Ships", , April 2003, pp. 92-97 – Illustrator/Author * The Official Star Trek The Next Generation: Build the USS Enterprise NCC-1701-D, 2011 – Co-illustrator/Co-author * Klingon Bird of Prey Owners' Workshop Manual, 2012 – Co-illustrator/Co-author Star Trek interviews *''Star Trek'' DVD and Blu-ray special features: **TNG Season 1 DVD-special feature, "The Making of a Legend" ("Artistic Design") **TNG Season 3 DVD-special feature, "Departmental Briefing Year Three" ("Greg Jein: Modelmaker"), interviewed on **TNG Season 4 DVD-special feature, "Select Historical Data" ("A New Ship Debuts"), interviewed on 27 November 2001 **TNG Season 6 DVD-special feature, "Mission Overview Year Six" ("Resolving the Cliffhanger"), interviewed on 27 November 2001 **DS9 Season 1 DVD-special feature, "Deep Space Nine: A Bold Beginning" (interview from ) **DS9 Season 1 DVD-special feature, "Deep Space Nine Sketchbook" (interview from 7 October 2002) **DS9 Season 2 DVD-special feature, "Deep Space Nine Sketchbook: Season Two" (interview from 7 October 2002) **DS9 Season 2 DVD-special feature, "New Station, New Ships" (interview from 7 October 2002) **VOY Season 2 DVD-special feature, "Designing the USS Voyager" (interview from ) **VOY Season 5 DVD-special feature, "Ships of the Delta Quadrant" (interview from 6 October 2003}}) **TNG Season 1 Blu-ray-special feature, "Stardate Revisited, Part 3: The Continuing Mission" (2012) **TNG Season 4 Blu-ray-special feature, "In Conversation: The Star Trek Art Department" (2013) *Print publications: **"Designing the Enterprise", Dennis Fischer, The Official Star Trek: The Next Generation Magazine, Issue 4, April 1988, pp. 29-37 **"Rick Sternbach: Senior Illustrator", Bill Warren, The Official Star Trek: The Next Generation Magazine, issue 15, June 1991, pp. 14-19 **"Designing the ", Larry Nemecek, , June 2000, pp. 18-21 **"Designing the Vor'cha", Larry Nemecek, , July 2000, pp. 70-73 **"Rick Sternbach: Star Trek Illustrator", Larry Nemecek, , October 2001, pp. 82-88 **"Teaching a legend to fly; Tell Scotty What To Do!", , December 2001, p. 112 **"Imagining the Future", , Larry Nemecek, April 2002, pp. 42-49 **"Keeping the shuttlepod simple", Larry Nemecek, , June 2002, p. 122. **"Production Design: The Worlds of Season Three", Larry Nemecek, , August 2002, pp. 42-47 **"Rick Sternbach: Designing the Future", Alec Peters, ''The official STAR TREK prop and costume auction catalog, 2010, pp. 28-29 *''Star Trek'' documentaries: **''Journey's End: The Saga of Star Trek: The Next Generation'' (1994) **''How William Shatner Changed the World'' (2005) Appendices Further reading *''The Making of Deep Space Nine, 1994 *The Art of Star Trek, 1995 *Star Trek: The Next Generation - The Continuing Mission, 1997 *Star Trek: Voyager - A Vision of the Future'', 1998 External links * RickSternbach.com - official site * * * Rick Sternbach at The Internet Speculative Fiction Database * 2001 Interview with Rick Sternbach at TrekPlace.com * * FWG5kgNctasKk|2002 Rick Sternbach interview|external}} * at (archived version, no longer featured at new version) * 2006 Rick Sternbach interview at UFP Croatia.com * at (archived version, no longer featured at new version) * 2007 Rick Sternbach interview at Seb's Web Archive * 2009 Rick Sternbach interview, Part 1 and Part 2 at Star Trek Prop, Costume & Auction Blog Art department Category:Star Trek reference authors Category:Star Trek reference artists de:Rick Sternbach es:Rick Sternbach